What are your plans for your images after you pass on?
May 24, 2018 23:59:19 #
Once a year I’ll put together a Shutterfly album of special family photos from throughout the year, a second one of the vacation photos from trips I took with my wife, and a third of sports shots of our four grandkids (little league, soccer, etc.). A year ago our oldest grandson graduated from high school and I did an album of selected sports pics since he was about a year old wearing a Dodger t-shirt, through his little league and soccer years, and his four years on the high school wrestling team. Some of the older photos came from prints his mom gave me and the more recent ones from that darn Nikon D500 (makes it too easy to come home from a sporting event with way too many pics). It was a nice graduation present. Once in awhile we’ll pull one of these albums off the shelf and browse through it. Easy to retrieve and nice memories. I’m not sure if our kids or grandkids will look at these albums years from now after we’re gone, but they might. For sure we enjoy them now. I’m pretty sure the thousands of photos in my computer and backup drives will never be seen again by anyone.
May 25, 2018 00:02:09 #
May 25, 2018 00:08:26 #
rmacilroy
Loc: pompano beach, fl
slide show next week at my place nice getto in the bronks hope you all will attend free box wine and chicken wings. RSVP
May 25, 2018 00:21:31 #
I feel sad when I read the comments that say "No one cares, my family doesn't care, I don't care, etc." The first thing my grandkids reach for when they visit is the 24 photo albums that I have kept through the years. They love seeing pictures of their parents when they were the same age. (My kids will have to decide who gets what album.) But since I don't "do" photo albums anymore, I have paid umpteen dollars to have FAMILY pix--negatives and slides--digitized and put on CDs, then I made copies of the CDs for each of my kids. The problem is the non-family "art" photographs--landscapes, florals, sunsets, etc. They've asked me to please cull them and save the ones I think are best. I'm doing that. Forget hard drives. I'm putting them on CDs and thumb drives. What really makes me feel good is when I visit my kids and see my photographs on their walls.
May 25, 2018 00:29:51 #
rmacilroy
Loc: pompano beach, fl
i agree when see pics of my geat neph and nies always makes me smile
May 25, 2018 00:35:02 #
rmacilroy
Loc: pompano beach, fl
i am alone but not alone God never left me love of humanty never left me pretty luck guy right.
May 25, 2018 08:09:45 #
Tomcat5133
Loc: Gladwyne PA
I was really thinking about this forum. And an additional thought is their is to much of everything today. Photos too.
The photos my wife collected are iconic. And their are not many of them but they are powerful. I look at the few photos of
my uncle I never met. He was handsome. Looked full of life. Athletic track. And lived in Brooklyn with my mother.
He was a master sergeant in the army and in a number of battles. We think he was killed in the battle of the Bulge.
His photo's remind of the tragedy of wars. He married a southern girl and then went to war. After he passed she
died few years later. I think that the whole experience might have been to much for her. This its what photo's are about.
The photos my wife collected are iconic. And their are not many of them but they are powerful. I look at the few photos of
my uncle I never met. He was handsome. Looked full of life. Athletic track. And lived in Brooklyn with my mother.
He was a master sergeant in the army and in a number of battles. We think he was killed in the battle of the Bulge.
His photo's remind of the tragedy of wars. He married a southern girl and then went to war. After he passed she
died few years later. I think that the whole experience might have been to much for her. This its what photo's are about.
May 25, 2018 09:54:43 #
Bear2 wrote:
I am only 77, so I will start thinking about what to do with my images when I get older.
May 25, 2018 11:21:28 #
FASC Rat wrote:
Do you have any plans for your images?
Do you have any plans for your images?
Yes. I have them categorized in both a personal section and non personal. When I'm gone whoever ends up with them can do whatever they want.
May 25, 2018 15:08:21 #
I take photographs to please myself. I know it might seem selfish but I think I'm just being pragmatic. Our children and grandchildren will want to take their own photos. The pictures of places, animals, and special events that dad or granddad took, while nice - maybe even outstanding, will never be as important to them as their own art. So, do the best you can primarily for your own personal satisfaction, and save the best in a manner that people who might care can find them. Happily, when we pass on, nothing others do, or don't do, will hurt our feelings or diminish that satisfaction we felt when we pressed the shutter on that very special day and, when we downloaded to the computer said, "Wow!"
May 25, 2018 16:42:39 #
I have 25 framed favorite photos. My daughter knows they mean a lot to me and said she'd hang some in her home and some in her office at work. Three disks of favorites for whatever she wants.
May 28, 2018 22:28:46 #
I have been thinking about this topic for some time. I have a couple of albums of my dad's WW1 and after in the China sea photos from 1918 to 1923. He was in the Navy on the Battleship New Jersey ( I have a large photo of the ship and another of the entire ships company which are deteriorating) and refueling ship, Patoka. Some of these have faded badly. I have his discharge, uniforms, and some naval dispatches from that era. My son and daughters have exhibited lukewarm interest and are busy with life as I am. My Dad captioned most of these photos so I know where they were taken. I also have taken many photos but unlike him I didn't keep very good records. I have other things such as my great grandfather's Civil War discharge as well as a few tin types and posed photos from the 1880s, grandmother's High School class photo, 1896 etc. I have a V600 Photo Scanner but have not scanned a single one of these old photos. I have done a few of my early photos and the V600 seems to do a good job at scanning and repairing. This is kind of overwhelming for me but at least I am thinking about doing something. The question is: Who would be interested in these photos if I go to the trouble and time to preserve them?
Jun 11, 2018 00:55:13 #
I am totally new to the forum so what I will offer is done with some reservation. About me, I am an amateur photographer in the most complete sense, though with a history that prompts my interest. My father was also an amateur, but with a sense of dedication that has always impressed me. He studied portraiture which dictated at least in part, his camera choice – a large format bellows camera. In his photography club, the focus was on portraiture and I was occasionally a volunteer model where even as a young boy, I learned some incredible things, like how to coil a light cord to prevent its kinking when uncoiled later. I also spent countless hours watching him develop and print from his negatives. This helped me when in college as I worked for a time at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory on the UC Berkeley campus in their darkroom processing proofs of what were called Progress Shots. I worked under their highly respected photographer as he documented the construction of the Cyclotron then under construction.
I was attracted to this thread because of my desire to archive and protect some very old family photographs, especially those of my father. I am sure all of you are aware of the incredible archival endurance of the silver based black and white negatives and prints. And opposing that the rapid degradation of the dye-based color negatives and prints that followed. I have spent countless hours digitizing negatives and prints with additional hours attempting to reclaim the original colors using Photoshop and Lightroom. With this in mind, I was talking about long range storage with a friend who worked at the Intel facility in Folsom, California. He mentioned that a Flash Drive has an expected life expectancy of about 10 years. He also mentioned that a DVD disk had a similar life expectancy if stored carefully. He then mentioned the development of the Millennium DVD that claims a life span of 1000 years if stored properly. This then prompted some research where I discovered that the JPG format most commonly used has the poorest life expectancy of the digital image storage formats with Tiff being the best. Then my thinking went to the hard copy idea for a more secure archival possibility for those few once in a lifetime images. That led me to the vulnerability, once again, of the die-based inks most often used in the typical ink jet printers and of course the papers used. I read that if we made an 8X10 using dye based inks and hung the picture near a window that allowed periodic direct sun exposure, you would likely see fading within a year or two.
I agree with most previous posts that many of our most treasured photographs might be of limited interest to generations to come, but there will be some that would be real treasures if still available. One such treasure of mine, though not a photograph, is a ten minute home movie clip filmed, I think, in 1938. It was shot by my father with his Kodak movie camera on black and white 16 mm film. It begins on the family farm in Utah showing his sister’s family sampling their farm grown watermelons with their farm animals in the background and followed by a segment filmed in several New York City locations showing his friends there with the typical short clip of the - photographer or cinematographer (him). This when he was there studying for his PhD. How to preserve this is a major challenge to me.
I have decided to attempt to select which photographs – mostly family members and other people of interest that might be of interest down the years. Then to print those few in a fairly large format using pigment-based inks on acid free paper. These should be good, if stored carefully, for many years. Of course, I think of these things primarily because, like many of us, I am old enough to have experienced many technical advances through the years. I remember the excitement I felt seeing the first image printable on one of the new “high tech” dot matrix printers - a club - as in an "Ace of Clubs" in a deck of cards. And I don’t think we have seen it all. Whatever the technology that is around the corner, a few Hard Copy prints would definitely be compatible and for someone, at some future time, they just might have an opportunity to find some keepers.
I was attracted to this thread because of my desire to archive and protect some very old family photographs, especially those of my father. I am sure all of you are aware of the incredible archival endurance of the silver based black and white negatives and prints. And opposing that the rapid degradation of the dye-based color negatives and prints that followed. I have spent countless hours digitizing negatives and prints with additional hours attempting to reclaim the original colors using Photoshop and Lightroom. With this in mind, I was talking about long range storage with a friend who worked at the Intel facility in Folsom, California. He mentioned that a Flash Drive has an expected life expectancy of about 10 years. He also mentioned that a DVD disk had a similar life expectancy if stored carefully. He then mentioned the development of the Millennium DVD that claims a life span of 1000 years if stored properly. This then prompted some research where I discovered that the JPG format most commonly used has the poorest life expectancy of the digital image storage formats with Tiff being the best. Then my thinking went to the hard copy idea for a more secure archival possibility for those few once in a lifetime images. That led me to the vulnerability, once again, of the die-based inks most often used in the typical ink jet printers and of course the papers used. I read that if we made an 8X10 using dye based inks and hung the picture near a window that allowed periodic direct sun exposure, you would likely see fading within a year or two.
I agree with most previous posts that many of our most treasured photographs might be of limited interest to generations to come, but there will be some that would be real treasures if still available. One such treasure of mine, though not a photograph, is a ten minute home movie clip filmed, I think, in 1938. It was shot by my father with his Kodak movie camera on black and white 16 mm film. It begins on the family farm in Utah showing his sister’s family sampling their farm grown watermelons with their farm animals in the background and followed by a segment filmed in several New York City locations showing his friends there with the typical short clip of the - photographer or cinematographer (him). This when he was there studying for his PhD. How to preserve this is a major challenge to me.
I have decided to attempt to select which photographs – mostly family members and other people of interest that might be of interest down the years. Then to print those few in a fairly large format using pigment-based inks on acid free paper. These should be good, if stored carefully, for many years. Of course, I think of these things primarily because, like many of us, I am old enough to have experienced many technical advances through the years. I remember the excitement I felt seeing the first image printable on one of the new “high tech” dot matrix printers - a club - as in an "Ace of Clubs" in a deck of cards. And I don’t think we have seen it all. Whatever the technology that is around the corner, a few Hard Copy prints would definitely be compatible and for someone, at some future time, they just might have an opportunity to find some keepers.
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